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This will expand the entire outline and show all the text in every row.

In this version of OmniOutliner, when an outline is exported as html, search works only on text that is visible. After the outline is fully expanded all text is visible and the typical command-f search will find everything.

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Explorers Foundation ••• home page

Glyphs ••• list of fragments of Freeorder

Investments ••• a table of all investments

freeorder ••• the concept & vision

Threads records indications of conversations and events important to Explorers Foundation, because somehow pertinent to the emergence of freeorder. If something in one of these interests you (beyond following the links provided), please contact us. Everything here has something to do with something our own visible region of freeorder network(s) is actually involved in.

Many of the things found in Threads will be found, in greater detail, collected in Vortices.

Vortices: Threads contain references to vortices, pages that record resources, discussions, and investments, relevant to Explorers Foundation areas of focus and investment.

Vortices, are born, die, evolve, merge, split, flow, and evolve.

A list of current Explorers Foundation Vortices •••

References to vortices: “v” + the name, e.g. vGuardian

freeorder welds together free & order to ensure that never again will the two concepts be thought to be in opposition to one another.

freeorder expresses the idea that orders arising from freedom work best for all of us who wish to use our full powers of imagination, reason, and action in pursuit of happiness and in service to people and things we love.

More extensive description of freeorder •••

* ∮forge is an abbreviation of “integrating freeorder generator,” an institutional form essential to the full emergence of freeorder, in various ways, among all of the world’s cultures, resulting in a “concert of civilizations,” a phrase used by James C. Bennett ••• author of The Anglosphere Challenge.

Definitions of freeorder:

• What’s good for explorers, within each of us and among us.

• A balance among designed and spontaneous orders that serves quest.

The conjecture implied by the second definition is that Hayek’s insights into kinds of order are useful in thought and productive in action and will remain so as the world of freeorder evolves.

The word quest indicates an aesthetics guided pattern of explorations. The romantic implications of the word are fundamental. The emergence of freeorder, within each of us and among us depends on fierce balances of romantic idealism and ruthless rationality.

A third definition: freeorder names something needed by free people, within each of them and among them. This definition poses a question, the answers to which point to exits leading out of our current distress.

How Explorers Foundation can be simultaneously liberal and conservative.

We are liberal (in the original and future meaning) in that we are for the freedom of every individual to imagine, think, act, and collaborate; and we are conservative to the extent that what we seek to conserve is exactly that same freedom. Such conservation of liberty requires saying “no” to some visible good things, and thereby protecting essential but invisible good things.

Freeorder Bridge 0.95 ••• version 0.95

Freeorder Bridge: from here to there ••• version 0.95 — a five page article (pdf) about how we will cross a seemingly impossibly wide strait. The metaphor of a suspension bridge is used to begin discussion of a centuries old chain of insights and actions that have enabled and will continue to enable the emergence of freeorder.

Weavers of freeorder

Hayek, on order, and how freeorder connects his “kinds of order” with quest

🔹 The word order is fundamental:

F. A. Hayek, in Volume I, Chapter Two, "Cosmos and Taxis", of Law, Legislation and Liberty (University of Chicago, 1973), suggests this definition of the word "order":

"By 'order' we shall throughout describe a state of affairs in which a multiplicity of elements of various kinds are so related to each other that we may learn from our acquaintance with some spatial or temporal part of the whole to form correct expectations concerning the rest, or at least expectations which have a good chance of proving correct."

Event: Free Speech, Cancel Culture, and Viewpoint Diversity on Campus ••• Princeton, moderated by Robbie George, 6 pm ET, 20 May 2021 ~Alumni & Donors Unite •••

Just in, an important note ••• from Calvin Coolidge ~Calvin Coolidge Presidential Foundation •••

And, from someone who seems to be in sympathy with Coolidge:

Everyone should be free to discuss anything, and find fault if fault there is.

“Are We Being Set Up for Mass Depopulation?” ••• by Joe Mercola, based on an interview ••• with Michael Yeadon, part of a yet to be released movie, “Planet Lockdown”. Michael Yeadon, Ph.D., is a life science researcher and former vice-president and chief scientist of allergy and respiratory research at Pfizer. —this interview contains an extremely unpleasant conjecture, but I’ve found it in the writing of others whom I respect, and so, I believe the conjecture should be criticized and defeated, if possible. And if not possible …? -ls

Full interviews from “Planet Lockdown”: https://planetlockdownfilm.com/full-interviews/

Partial list: Michael Yeadon, Václav Klaus, Knut Wittkowski, H.S.H Prince Michael of Liechtenstein, Reiner Fuellmich

“Since it is difficult, or rather impossible, to represent a man’s life as entirely spotless and free from blame, we should use the best chapters in it to build up the most complete picture and regard this as the true likeness. Any errors or crimes, on the other hand, which may tarnish a man’s career and may have been committed out of passion or political necessity, we should regard rather as a lapse from a particular virtue than as the products of some innate vice. We must not dwell on them too emphatically in our history, but should rather show indulgence to human nature for its inability to produce a character which is absolutely good and uncompromisingly dedicated to virtue.” —Plutarch, in the life of Cimon

“The individualist societies of the Anglosphere … have in economic matters generally had a transactional, rather than pseudo-familial and emotional relationship with the state. Anglosphere societies are neither economically egalitarian nor economically hierarchical by principle, but rather indifferent to economic equality.” —from James C. Bennett’s article ••• [Quadrant magazine] on Immanuel Todd’s latest book on the anthropology of family types.

James C. Bennett writes of his review of Emmanuel Todd’s Lineages of Modernity: A History of Humanity from the Stone Age to Homo Americanus: “Europeans often wonder how America can be so dominant when it seems so archaic in so many ways compared to Europe. It is dominant precisely because it is so archaic."

https://explorersfoundation.org/glyphery/630.html (a pdf of the review is here)

Alan Macfarlane: Tocqueville on China and America ••• [Cambridge] toward mutual understanding.

An introduction to Macfarlane’s work, in interviews on his life and work by Richard Marshall ••• [Cambridge] Inspiring materials for anyone thinking about freeorder.

Steven Levy asks, “The more interesting question is whether we will care to distinguish between a human and a machine—even when we know we are talking to a machine.” ••• [Wired]

Investments made by Explorers Foundation so far in 2021

Who: James C. Bennett

What: Show the potential for collaboration among Canada, New Zealand, Australia,

and the UK in the provision of a superior environment for entrepreneurial space ventures.

Why: Jim’s study will reveal the freeorder generative qualities of the Anglosphere.

Amount: $6,000

News release: explorersfoundation.org/archive/bennettjc-canzuk-space-phase-one-nr.pdf

Who: Linda Sweeney

What: ADU will act in support of change agents reforming higher education.

Why: Quality education is essential to the preservation of civilization.

Amount: $2,500 + $500 in June of last year

News release: explorersfoundation.org/archive/ef-adu-nr.pdf

What guides our investment philosophy: The vision and concept of quest serving balances among designed and spontaneous orders within individuals and cultures. We call such balances freeorder and are intent on generating an emergent culture we call Freeorder.

What we look for in people with whom we invest: Passionate and durable interest in something contributory to the emergence of Freeorder, in every case requiring curiosity, wonder, imagination, bold conjecture, critical thinking, and energy.

If the Emergence of Freeorder is seen as a multi-faceted crystal, then each of our investments relates to one or more of its faces.

Our pattern of investments is intended to evoke curiosity about that crystal and start conversations.

A table of EF investments describing each of our investments from 2004 to May 2021.

Freeorder Generators (forge) track and invest in the emergence of Freeorder and the generative application of the principles of freeorder. Integrating forge (∮forge) are observation posts and capital sources dwelling on the edge of the Emergence. Each ∮forge has an extremely limited scope of vision, but we have been watching the development of special zones for many years, and believe that they constitute an important feature of the Emergence. Here are some fragments of a pattern (one of many possible) seen today from the ∮forge that includes Explorers Foundation.

Spencer MacCallum’s The Art of Community ••• [free, otherwise not available] shows up in the early roots of many special zone projects … Spencer Heath’s Citadel, Market and Altar ••• [Reason review] … “Somalia - Clan Owned Freeports as Multi-Tenant Income Properties” ••• [glyph 392] ….. Richard Bolin created the World Export Processing Zone Association ••• — Bob Haywood worked with him and later became the director ….. Michael Strong and Mark Frazier's paper on "Women's Empowerment Free Zones" ••• ….. Startup Societies Foundation ••• … Charter Cities Institute ••• … Windward Foundation ••• [small land-improvement community governance] … The Seasteading Institute ••• … Institute for Competitive Governance ••• … Jim Bennett, the Anglosphere as optimal freezone host, New Victoria ••• … Honduras: Prospera ••• . Morazán City ••• [thanks to Joyce Brand] … Tom W. Bell ••• Your Next Government?: From the Nation State to Stateless Nations ••• [Amazon] . Ulex: the open source legal system ••• ….. Universidad Francisco Marroquin •••

Spencer MacCallum: A Man Beyond His Time ••• [Barnes & Noble, hardcover] ••• [Amazon] by Mike Hamel

“Ideas are seeds that originate in someone's imagination. Once shared, they are either ignored or pollenated by others. They take root and grow into beliefs, practices, and cultures. Good ideas produce good fruit. This book is a brief introduction to a man who has some great ideas that could lead to more humane societies. They deserve to be better understood and applied.This is the story of an extraordinary individual who always followed his own idiosyncratic passions. He interacted with, and influenced, some of the leading libertarian thinkers of his day. And he was the co-creator of possibly the only viable approach to a stateless world that could actually work.”

“Spencer MacCallum & The World He Made: A Eulogy (1931-2020)” ••• by Zach Caceres

“A Private Tech City Opens for Business in Honduras: Prospera, a mini startup nation with its own set of laws, begins recruiting residents amid local controversy” ••• [Bloomberg, March 2021]

What Birds Eat: How to Preserve the Natural Diet and Behavior of North American Birds ••• a recent book by Kim Long

“Deregulation and Discovery: When we change the rules so that people’s freedom to innovate is no longer restricted, they can discover new and better approaches that might have been impossible before” ••• by Steven Horwitz ••• on Libertarianism.org

A Summer Program to Invigorate Your Child's Passions — Expanse Summer •••

This summer, Expanse is thrilled to invite students from around the world to explore exciting professional paths while developing essential life skills.

Our program integrates daily technical workshops with deep dives into the ideas of classical thinkers and their written works.

By the end of the program, students walk away with new technical skills, a project to jumpstart their professional portfolio, and deep reflections on how to vigorously pursue the life they want.

Short video on Expanse Summer ••• [1 min 11 sec]

Matt Kibbe, Free the People ••• important resources for Freeorder

Matt Kibbe talks ••• to former Libertarian vice presidential nominee Spike Cohen about government fear mongering and the threat of vaccine passports to liberty. They also discuss how living with a chronic illness can be surprisingly motivating and what the Libertarian Party needs to do to get its house in order and start attracting voters. Cohen argues that Libertarians need to be better at addressing the practical concerns of real Americans and stop their bad habit of gatekeeping the movement.

Subscribe to Kibbe on Liberty on iTunes, Google Play, Spotify, YouTube, or anywhere you get podcasts.

James C. Bennett writes of his review of Emmanuel Todd’s Lineages of Modernity: A History of Humanity from the Stone Age to Homo Americanus: “Europeans often wonder how America can be so dominant when it seems so archaic in so many ways compared to Europe. It is dominant precisely because it is so archaic."

https://explorersfoundation.org/glyphery/630.html (a pdf of the review is here)

“88 Years Ago, FDR Banned Gold. Will a Bitcoin Ban Be Next?” ••• Tho Bishop ••• at Mises Institute •••

Zen snd the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance was “… rejected by more than 120 publishers. But it went on to become one of the best-selling philosophical books of all time – topping more than 5 million copies across 27 different languages.” —article ••• about Robert Pirsig’s book, found at Praxis ••• [Discover Praxis]

You Don't Need College to Unlock a Career You Love. Praxis is a college alternative that builds your skills and your network. Don’t pay [Praxis] until you’re hired. ••• [Discover Praxis]

Worth reading, distributing, discussing: “American Exodus: Don’t wait for the oligarchy to let you in. Just walk away” ••• published March 24, 2021 by Tablet Magazine ••• [about] by Angelo M. Codevilla ••• [bio at Independent Institute] author of The Ruling Class ••• [Reason Magazine review] There is a lot in this essay that fits the vision of the emergence of freeorder. ~thanks to Joe Bast for the link

Why Is Everyone in Texas Not Dying? ••• Jeffrey A. Tucker ••• AIER •••

Socialism consumes capital, the productive goods of the world, until finally we are overcome by the demands of nature.

This is a paraphrase of Mises: “Socialism is not in the least what it pretends to be. It is not the pioneer of a better and finer world, but a spoiler of what thousands of years of civilization have created. It does not build; it destroys. For destruction is the essence of it. It produces nothing, it only consumes what the social order based on private ownership in the means of production has created.” – Ludwig von Mises, Socialism [1951], quoted in the FFF Daily, for 23 March 2021 published by The Future of Freedom Foundation •••

Colorado Beaver Summit ••• October 20 & 22, 2021

“As climate change accelerates, Colorado experiences drought conditions with greater frequency, intensity and duration. These changes threaten our water supplies, our forests and our way of life. Beavers can help mitigate these effects. Please join us Wednesday and Friday, October 20 and 22, for the first Colorado Beaver Summit to learn how this keystone species can help us avoid the worst effects of climate change.” —Colorado Headwaters •••

Medici.tv: Yo-Yo Ma's moonlit magic: the Bach Cello Suites in Athens

"These suites are so meaningful. They’re not only companions and friends, but they’ve also been reference points in my life… For almost six decades, they have given me sustenance, comfort, and joy during times of stress, celebration, and loss. What power does this music possess that even today, after three hundred years, it continues to help us navigate through troubled times?" –Yo-Yo Ma

A small part of this seems to be free, but then an invitation to subscribe appears. In my opinion it’s worth it. -ls

Phase One of CANZUK Space Study, a project of James C. Bennett, is now funded

Explorers Foundation is pleased to announce that it has funded Phase One of the Study Project on Canada-Australia-United Kingdom-New Zealand Collaboration in the Development of Interplanetary Space, or “CANZUK Space Study” for short. The Principal Investigator of this study will be James C. Bennett, who combines a long history of entrepreneurial activity, policy advocacy, and consulting in the commercial arena in the USA and UK with an equally long history of researching and writing about space policy, and broader topics of technology, politics, and society.

Press Release, 15 March 2021 •••

EF’s investments in the work of James C. Bennett •••

Precautionary Principle Destroying the EU — paragraphs taken from “The precautionary principle is literally killing Europe” ••• Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, 16 Mar 2021, The Telegraph — the article is mainly about the handling of vaccines against the virus, but AEP uses it to illustrate and contrast general principles of importance.

“The precautionary principle has been married with another EU deformity: its slow, rigid, legalistic ethos, and its 190,000 pages of near-irreversible Acquis. The two together have reinforced each other in a paralysing fashion. This regime is perfect for vested interests that know how to play the Brussels game and manipulate the regulatory committees. The zero-risk code can be mobilised to shut out rivals and new technologies that pose a commercial threat.”

“It is also true that the precautionary principle has made inroads into Anglo-Saxon societies. But only up to a point. The US, the UK, and Canada still cleave towards the ‘innovation principle’, a preference for trial-and-error and a willingness to risk failure along the way — ‘nothing ventured, nothing gained’”. 

“You could argue that this philosophy has its roots in English Common Law, a legal culture that loosely permits behaviour unless explicitly forbidden by statute. It is fundamentally different from Napoleonic law that prohibits behaviour unless explicitly authorised – “guilty until proven innocent”. Legal scholars will object to this contrasting schema but it contains a nugget of truth.”

“The innovation philosophy also has roots in the Baconian Method: the scientific interrogation of facts: the bottom-up empiricism of Francis Bacon and his followers, from Newton through to the Scottish Enlightenment, and beyond. There are great Baconians in Continental Europe of course, but they are not dominant.” 

“What is dominant is the top-down Cartesian Method instilled into the French civil service, and through them into the EU’s machinery. It has fused with the zero-risk totemism of modern Germans to produce a precautionary monster, and a long list of destructive policies.”

“The vaccine saga has driven home the point that the British people really are different animals from Continental Europeans, a cultural distinction that dates back at least 700 years and one that is amply explored by Cambridge anthropologist Alan MacFarlane in The Origins of English Individualism. This island Sonderweg is not a myth.”

A principle of freeorder thinking: be extremely cautious about excessive (blinding) aggregation of data, resulting in loss of differences and distinctions which may be causal.

“The weirdest people in the world?” ••• Behavioral and Brain Sciences (2010)

“Abstract: Behavioral scientists routinely publish broad claims about human psychology and behavior in the world’s top journals based on samples drawn entirely from Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic (WEIRD) societies. Researchers – often implicitly – assume that either there is little variation across human populations, or that these “standard subjects” are as representative of the species as any other population. Are these assumptions justified? Here, our review of the comparative database from across the behavioral sciences suggests both that there is substantial variability in experimental results across populations and that WEIRD subjects are particularly unusual compared with the rest of the species – frequent outliers. The domains reviewed include visual perception, fairness, cooperation, spatial reasoning, categorization and inferential induction, moral reasoning, reasoning styles, self-concepts and related motivations, and the heritability of IQ. The findings suggest that members of WEIRD societies, including young children, are among the least representative populations one could find for generalizing about humans. Many of these findings involve domains that are associated with fundamental aspects of psychology, motivation, and behavior – hence, there are no obvious a priori grounds for claiming that a particular behavioral phenomenon is universal based on sampling from a single subpopulation. Overall, these empirical patterns suggests that we need to be less cavalier in addressing questions of human nature on the basis of data drawn from this particularly thin, and rather unusual, slice of humanity. We close by proposing ways to structurally re-organize the behavioral sciences to best tackle these challenges.”

Here’s a good link to Tanner Greer’s excellent review of Bennett & Lotus’ America 3.0:

This book is currently contributing to the evolution of an Explorers Foundation project.

Tanner’s blog is The Scholar’s Stage: https://scholars-stage.blogspot.com

Leemon Baird, Hashgraph, a digital innovation based on gossip protocol, may become important in the evolving crypto world, especially for tokenized real world assets.

Leemon Baird’s company, Hedera Hashgraph •••

What is Asset Tokenization? ••• [Hedera website]

What is Hashgraph Consensus? ••• [Hedera website]

YouTube hosts talks by Leemon Baird. Search on “leemon+baird+hashgraph”

Dr. Leemon Baird's talk: “Tokenization with Distributed Ledger Technologies"

Originally delivered at Kennesaw State University. I cannot find a good link for this lecture, so it has been copied into our archive — a 500 MB .mp4, well illustrated. After click, the presentation starts almost immediately. A smaller .zip file is here: ••• -ls

Thanks to Dr. Solomon Negash ••• Kennesaw State University.

“The Swirlds Hashgraph Consensus Algorithm: Fair, Fast, Byzantine Fault Tolerance” ••• <the full paper, 2016> Leemon Baird ••• <the Hedera team> May 31, 2016, Swirlds Tech Report Swirlds-Tr-2016-01

“Abstract. A new system, the Swirlds hashgraph consensus algorithm, is proposed for replicated state machines with guaranteed Byzantine fault tolerance. It achieves fairness, in the sense that it is dicult for an attacker to manipulate which of two transactions will be chosen to be first in the consensus order. It has complete asynchrony, no leaders, no round robin, no proof-of-work, eventual consensus with probability one, and high speed in the absence of faults. It is based on a gossip protocol, in which the participants don’t just gossip about transactions. They gossip about gossip. They jointly build a hashgraph reflecting all of the gossip events. This allows Byzantine agreement to be achieved through virtual voting. Alice does not send Bob a vote over the Internet. Instead, Bob calculates what vote Alice would have sent, based on his knowledge of what Alice knows. This yields fair Byzantine agreement on a total order for all transactions, with very little communication overhead beyond the transactions themselves.”

The Complete Baseline of Health ••• [Amazon Kindle] Jon Barron •••

“No longer limited by publishing costs and the confines of the printed page, it was my goal to make The Complete Baseline of Health the first truly essential alternative health book of the digital age.” —Jon Barron vMethuselah

Barron, Jon. The Complete Baseline of Health: The Digital Reference Edition: A Step-by-Step Guide to Optimum Health and Relief from Catastrophic Illness (p. 7). Barron & Barron Publishing. Kindle Edition.

Robert Gore, on his, Straight Line Logic ••• has posted a link ••• to Brent Hamachek’s remarkable essay, “Understanding and Embracing the Role of the 21st-Century American Dissident” ••• [hamachek’s site]

Excellent, by Robert Gore, Everything I Know About Business I Learned From The Godfather •••

Οι θεοί στέλνουν νήμα για το έργο που ξεκίνησε — an ancient Greek saying (Homer?) inscribed on the wall of Andrew Carnegie’s study in New York, translated as “The Gods send thread for the web begun.”

The translation of the word ἔργον is surprising. It means work, not web.

Probably, it was translated as web to more poetically convey the meaning in a stronger image. Looms, threads, and webs were central to Carnegie’s early life. I wouldn’t be surprised if it was he who required the “mistranslation” so as to make the saying deeply personal. He may have had that simple truth in his mind and heart long before he encountered the Greek saying, possibly passed down to him by generations of ancestral weavers. Speculation.

Carnegie knew it was an ancient Greek saying. On his wall I think it was in English.

http://www.briantaylor.com/AndrewCarnegie.htm — lists the quotations on the wall of his study, and cites Wall’s biography ••• [review by Thomas J. Misa , Illinois Institute of Technology] which was my original source when I used the quotation to explain the Open Network.

I have not seen a picture of the wall, but I expect the quotations were inscribed on the frieze.

“Remembering Karl Popper” ••• by David Cohen, Feb 2021 on Quillette ••• vPopper

What if the word freeorder is question more than answer? ••• [glyph 629]

Pulitzer Winning Journalist Charlie LeDuff Announces ••• [radio show] COVID Death Count Lawsuit Against Michigan Governor — working with Mackinac Center ••• to obtain records revealing why, how, and how many old people with CoVid were sent into nursing homes, probably infecting others and leading to a large number of unnecessary deaths.

Reporter Charlie LeDuff has a show called “No BS News Hour” ••• — the name of the show is accurate. We need this kind of reporting. vSheridan

News ••• from the Initiative for Free Trade ••• London vAnglosphere

A wonderful, and I think, necessary book: The Lost Words ••• by Robert Macfarlane

Helping to bridge the expanding gap between childhood and the natural world.

Excellence is never an accident. It is always the result of high intention, sincere effort, and intelligent execution; it represents the wise choice of many alternatives - choice, not chance, determines your destiny. ~Aristotle, distilled by Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy, 1926. Thanks to Caelan Huntress, who wrote: "My quote of all time is a misattribution" ••• vEudaimonia

Ethan Yang’s ••• “Why We Need Simple Rules for a Complex World” ••• written for the American Institute for Economic Research (AIER •••) explains that Epstein’s book “sets forth a general framework for an optimal legal and regulatory apparatus for a society as sophisticated as the one we have now. Its core assertion is that a system that maximizes freedom over one that seeks to regulate everything in its path would lead to a far better society.” vBlackstone

“The main takeaway from this book is that there is massive potential to improve society, if we move away from the current manner in which we view regulation to a system that prioritizes individual autonomy.” —Yang

Bibliographies by Williamson M. Evers ••• Independent Institute •••

The Crisis in Civil Rights: Best Books and Articles on Race, Police, and the Welfare State •••

Readings on Anti-Semitism •••

Readings on Police Reform •••

Readings on Poverty and the Welfare State •••

Readings on Race and Civil Rights •••

An introduction to Williamson M. Evers ••• [video: start at 1:40]

After Collapse: The End of America and the Rebirth of Her Ideals ••• [Amazon] by Max Borders ••• [Facebook]

After Collapse provides basis for imaginative and critical discussion. It should be widely read, especially in schools where there is interest in learning to think rather than only to believe and react. Things are bad enough to require deep thought and resolute action — which may succeed!

This book could profitably be read along with America 3.0 by James C. Bennett and Michael J. Lotus. See Tanner Greer’s review ••• on The Scholar’s Stage •••

Greer writes: “It is unusual for me to read a book aimed at popular conservative audiences.  I am something of a disaffected conservative. Crony capitalism and government overreach have proved to be bipartisan endeavors, and I have long lost faith that the Republican party can ever be more than an organ of America's governing elite. [1] Outside of the beltway the broader currents of mainstream conservatism are so full of angry sound and righteous fury (and nothing else) that I have long stopped paying close attention them. The movement is in desperate need of a clearer vision and more compelling purpose.”

Is it time to question the PCR virus test and challenge the policies built on it?

“Coronavirus Scandal Breaking in Merkel’s Germany. False Positives and the Drosten PCR Test” ••• by F. William Engdahl

“The 2020 Worldwide Corona Crisis: Destroying Civil Society, Engineered Economic Depression, Global Coup d’État and the “Great Reset” ••• by Michel Chossudovsky

The Tyranny of Metrics ••• [Princeton] by Jerry Z. Muller •••

The most countable things are sometimes poor guides.

An attempt to cancel Dorian S. Abbot at University of Chicago was defeated [see “More Weight] with the help of the Free Speech Union ••• vGuardian

“‘More Weight’: An Academic’s Guide to Surviving Campus Witch Hunts” ••• by Dorian S. Abbot, 5 Feb 2021

“Since these cancellation tactics are increasingly being deployed against academics who advocate mainstream views on any number of subjects—including hiring and admission—I’ve assembled some thoughts based on my recent experience, in the hope that my advice might be useful to others who find themselves in my position. If we’re going to defend the pursuit of truth, the primacy of reason, and academic freedom effectively, we need to discuss tactics that have worked, and build on these successes.”

Free Speech Union ••• — defense services

Free speech is the bedrock on which all our other freedoms rest, yet it is currently in greater peril than at any time since the Second World War. The Free Speech Union is a non-partisan, mass-membership public interest body that stands up for the speech rights of its members. If you think there’s a risk you’ll be penalised for exercising your legal right to free speech, whether it’s in the workplace or the public square, you need the protection of the Free Speech Union. How might we protect you?

• If you find yourself being targeted by a digital outrage mob on social media for having exercised your legal right to free speech, we may mobilise an army of supporters.

• If a petition is launched calling for you to be fired, when you’ve done nothing other than exercise your legal right to free speech, we may help you organise a counter-petition.

• If you’re no-platformed by a university—a feminist professor who challenges trans orthodoxy, for instance—we’ll encourage you to fight back and members of our advisory councils may be able to tell you what remedies are available to you.

• If you’re a student being investigated by your university for breaching a speech code, we may take up your case with the university.

• If you’re punished by your employer because you’ve exercised your lawful right to free speech, we’ll do our best to provide you with assistance or refer you to specialists who can help.

“Substack is a place for independent writing. Subscribe directly to writers you trust. Take back your mind” ••• vSheridan

“My Resignation from the Intercept” [29Oct20] ••• Glenn Greenwald •••

“The same trends of repression, censorship and ideological homogeneity plaguing the national press generally have engulfed the media outlet I co-founded, culminating in censorship of my own articles.”

“The Journalistic Tattletale and Censorship Industry …” ••• Glenn Greenwald

‘A new and rapidly growing journalistic “beat” has arisen over the last several years that can best be described as an unholy mix of junior high hall-monitor tattling and Stasi-like citizen surveillance. It is half adolescent and half malevolent. Its primary objectives are control, censorship, and the destruction of reputations for fun and power. Though its epicenter is the largest corporate media outlets, it is the very antithesis of journalism.’

Once upon a time, gold bonds were the norm. They effectively financed productive enterprise & generated income for bondholders – until 1933. It took 87 years, but now the gold bond market is reemerging ••• [audio 23 min, youtube] an interview with Keith Wiener, Monetary Metals •••

“Tech Wars: RCA and the Television Industry” ••• by Gary Hoover, The American Business History Center ••• vWatt

Scottsdale, Ariz, February 5, 2021—Monetary Metals® announces the renewal and expansion of its gold, silver & platinum leases to Money Metals Exchange, to finance the Idaho-based business’ bullion inventory. vMulligan

Dubai Creates 'Space Court' For Out-of-this-world Disputes ••• “The tribunal will be based at the Dubai International Financial Centre (DIFC) Courts, an independent British-inspired arbitration centre based on common law.” vAnglosphere

Michael Yon, journalist & photographer, “America’s most experienced living combat correspondent”. An interview with Yon: “'Agent Provocateur' Tactics Seen at Jan 6 US Capitol Protest” ••• [video, youtube]

How the Great Barrington Declaration Came to Be ••• with Jeffrey Tucker

Monetary Metals ••• issues world’s first gold bond ••• since 1933

The Fabric of Civilization: How Textiles Made the World ••• by Virginia Postrel •••

Shelby Steele’s new investigative documentary, “What Killed Michael Brown?” ••• Reviews: Chicagoboyz ••• National Review ••• Reason •••

Steel’s idea of “poetic truth” is interesting and useful.

Mr. Steele is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution. This article is adapted from his forthcoming [now published] book Shame: How America’s Past Sins Have Polarized Our Country.

Samizdata ••• A blog for people with a critically rational individualist perspective

“The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property.

Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.

We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.”

Virus: “The Decimal Point that Blew Up the World” ••• by Jeffrey A. Tucker ••• for AIER •••

“What was the basis of panic that led the lights to darken on civilization?”

Spencer MacCallum (1931-2020) ••• True, beautiful: A eulogy by Zach Caceres •••

Brexit Party transforms ••• into Reform Party — vAnglosphere

Wolfram Alpha partners with IOHK to integrate data from the Cardano blockchain •••

Stephen Blackwood ••• of Ralston College ••• interviews ••• Stephen Wolfram •••

“It’s time for the ‘Deplorables’ to become the Unconquerables” ••• Glenn H. Reynolds ••• New York Post, December 17, 2020 — Glenn H. Reynold’s blog, Instapundit •••

The wave that sweeps away authoritarian culture will be a Romantic one. It will not be fundamentally rational or logical. Freeorder names a Romantic movement, in which logic is an indispensable servant of art, never forsaken, but never dominant. The songs that rise in all of us will make a wind to sweep authoritarian opposition to oblivion. -ls

thumos (from Greek: θυμός) ~thanks to Roger Kimball for his essay •••

Thumos (also commonly spelled 'thymos'; Greek: θυμός) is a Greek word expressing the concept of "spiritedness" (as in "spirited stallion" or "spirited debate"). The word indicates a physical association with breath or blood and is also used to express the human desire for recognition. It is not a somatic feeling, as nausea and giddiness are.

We need a new word to throw into the faces of the opponents of liberty, a word with spirit and ring to it. A word that demands a response when there can be no reasoned response. Defense, only, will fail. We must take the offensive.

Filecoin interviews ••• tell a magnificent story of freeorder, building a massive project from quest serving balances among designed and spontaneous orders … immutable storage of documents . uses in journalism . future of archives . Protocol Labs and development of the IPFS file system .

Protocol Labs ••• developers of the IPFS file system

A user of Filecoin: USC Shoah Foundation ••• – “The Institute for Visual History and Education, formerly Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation, is a nonprofit organization dedicated to making audio-visual interviews with survivors and witnesses of the Holocaust (which in Hebrew is called the Shoah) and other genocides, a compelling voice for education and action.” -Wikipedia

UK Medical Freedom Alliance ••• Professionals supporting medical choice and informed consent - articles •••

Doctors and Medical Professionals From All Over The World Speak Out : On Covid, vaccinations etc: ••• [video on Brighteon - brief statements]

The Mother Tree Project •••

“The Mother Tree Project explores how connections and communication between trees, particularly below-ground connections between Douglas-fir Mother Trees and seedlings, could influence forest recovery and resilience following various harvesting and regeneration treatments. The project was designed to explore these relationships across different climates, in order to understand how climate change could influence these processes and affect the outcomes of the treatments.”

About the research of Dr. Suzanne Simard, forest ecology professor at the University of British Columbia, founder of the Project: “The Social Life of Forests: Trees appear to communicate and cooperate through subterranean networks of fungi. What are they sharing with one another?” ••• by Ferris Jabr, Photographs by Brendan George Ko

Sean Gabb’s critique ••• of the phrase “Cultural Marxism”

British abolition of slavery

“How much did all this cost? David Eltis reckoned that the suppression of the Atlantic slave-trade cost British taxpayers a minimum of £250,000 per annum (equal to about £1 billion today) for half a century.” https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/britain-slave-trade-and-the-problem-with-decolonisation- by Nigel Bigger, Nov 29, 2020

See also Bigger’s “Britain, Slavery, and Anti-Slavery,” Nov 26, 2020

“Civil Disobedience Over Lockdowns Spreads Across America” ••• by Jon Miltmore, 25Nov20

Education: Teaching how to think, not what to believe

Alumni and Donors Unite. Taking action to restore academic freedom in higher education.

Our purpose

Alumni and Donors Unite brings awareness of the need for a return to the original purpose of a college education. We support education not indoctrination, and are on a mission to restore free inquiry and individual empowerment to higher education by leveraging the substantial financial power and influence of alumni and other donors to counterbalance “overt threats to free-speech and diversity of thinking” and the cultural Marxism that is prevalent on college campuses. We open the eyes of donors—many of whom have little idea of the degree and depth of the corruption at their alma maters. We connect alumni and other who care deeply about higher education, with their options to support those changes, and invest in alignment with their values.

We are an “action tank”! Mobilizing/activating alumni and donors to engage and face down the issues in higher ed. In a myriad of ways.

Linda Sweeney

Founder

Alumni and Donors Unite

(858) 699-4736

The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education ••• (FIRE)

“The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education's mission is to defend and sustain the individual rights of students and faculty members at America’s colleges and universities. These rights include freedom of speech, freedom of association, due process, legal equality, religious liberty, and sanctity of conscience — the essential qualities of liberty.”

FIRE, on the Chicago Statement ••• [pdf]

National Association of Scholars ••• (NAS)

“The National Association of Scholars upholds the standards of a liberal arts education that fosters intellectual freedom, searches for the truth, and promotes virtuous citizenship.”

James Martin Center ••• (JMC)

“Our goals are to improve colleges and universities, especially in North Carolina.

• Increase the diversity of ideas taught, debated, and discussed on campus;

• Encourage respect for the institutions that underlie economic prosperity and freedom of action and conscience;

• Increase the quality of teaching and students’ commitment to learning so that they graduate with strong literacy and fundamental knowledge;

• Encourage cost-effective administration and governance.

• Inform parents, students, trustees, alumni, and administrators about actual learning on campus and how it can be improved;

• Inform taxpayers about the use and impact of their funds;

• Find ways to acquaint students with ideas that are dismissed or marginalized on campuses today;

• Be a watchdog for legislative and administrative governance.

Ralston College ••• Stephen Blackwood ••• founder

“Ralston College is committed to an educational vision that enables students to lead lives of self-knowledge, freedom, and substance. The most distinguished colleges and universities in the world have historically been likewise committed, and there are still today pockets of teachers, administrators, and institutes who endeavor to honor that vision.”

Robert P. George, Princeton

“Advice to Students on the Fringes of the Moment” ••• — For students at any university caught up in a moment of demand for uniform opinion. George posted a note to Princeton students, on his Facebook page, 25 Aug 2020. This paragraph captures the essence of George's advice:

“Thinking is not something that can be outsourced. You have to do it for yourself. Don't let your professors tell you what to think. Don't let popular opinion on campus dictate your convictions. If a professor tries to indoctrinate you, resist. His or her job is to educate you. Indoctrination is the antithesis of education. If there is groupthink on campus, the response it should trigger in you is a desire to probe and question. What is to be said on the other side? Are there thinkers and writers who doubt or deny the "consensus"? If so, read and carefully consider what they have to say. Make up your own mind. Think for yourself.”

The entire Facebook note from Robert P. George: http://explorersfoundation.org/glyphery/623.html

The Philadelphia Statement ••• (please consider signing)

“Social Media mobs. Cancel culture. Campus speech policing. These are all part of life in today’s America. Freedom of expression is in crisis. Truly open discourse—the debates, exchange of ideas, and arguments on which the health and flourishing of a democratic republic crucially depend—is increasingly rare. Ideologues demonize opponents to block debates on important issues and to silence people with whom they disagree.

“We must ask ourselves: Is this the country we want? Surely not. We want—and to be true to ourselves we need—to be a nation in which we and our fellow citizens of many different faiths, philosophies, and persuasions can speak their minds and honor their deepest convictions without fear of punishment and retaliation.

“If we seek a brighter future, we must relearn a fundamental truth: Our liberty and our happiness depend upon the maintenance of a public culture in which freedom and civility coexist—where people can disagree robustly, even fiercely, yet treat each other as human beings—and, indeed, as fellow citizens—not mortal enemies. “Liberty is meaningless where the right to utter one’s thoughts and opinions has ceased to exist,” Frederick Douglass declared in 1860. Indeed, our liberal democracy is rooted in and dependent upon the shared understanding that all people have inherent dignity and worth, and that they must be treated accordingly.”

The complete statement ••• (please consider signing)

The Chicago Statement

‘The “Chicago Statement” refers to the free speech policy statement produced by the Committee on Freedom of Expression at the University of Chicago. In July of 2014, University of Chicago President Robert J. Zimmer and Provost Eric D. Isaacs tasked the Committee with “articulating the University’s overarching commitment to free, robust, and uninhibited debate and deliberation among all members of the University’s community.” The Committee, which was chaired by esteemed University of Chicago Law School professor Geoffrey Stone, released the report (Report of the Committee on Freedom of Expression) in January of 2015.’

Stand Together Foundation ••• [letter about] created by Brian Hooks (CEO) and Charles G. Koch

Believe in People: Bottom-Up Solutions for a Top-Down World ••• by Charles G. Koch and Brian Hooks. The authors of this book understand freeorder.

The authors write: “We believe so much in the potential of all people that when you order the book, we'll invest the full purchase price evenly among these six change-makers.”

Benjamin Disraeli & William Gladstone ••• [video, youtube] seismographs are picking up interesting vibrations.

Matt Taibbe ••• a journalist we are reading and admiring

“The Worst Choice Ever” ••• on the U.S. election: “Donald Trump is a disaster, but Joe Biden's party is democratic in name only. Why this year's election is a vomit milkshake” -Taibbe

vSheridan •••

Freedom Foundation of Southern Africa ••• work ••• on Covid-19 lockdown

“The Free Market Foundation (FMF) has promoted and fostered an open society, the Rule of Law, personal liberty, and economic and press freedom since its founding in 1975. The current global outbreak of COVID-19 (the novel coronavirus) is no exception. The FMF is deeply concerned about the overly intrusive and restrictive measures the South African government, and other governments, have unleashed upon their populations.

“The economic impact of the so-called national lockdown will be dire, particularly for South Africa’s poor, ten million of whom were unemployed before the disaster began. The arbitrary designation and thus closure of many businesses deemed “non-essential” will for many years haunt the economy. The constitutional rights and civil liberties of all South Africans are on the line.”

South Africa, Khaya Lam: Transformation through Ownership •••

“Full title deeds through Bond Cancellation. Land Reform breakthrough by Remgro, Cederberg Municipality and FMF in Clanwilliam, Western Cape

“On 8 October 2020, in a landmark event for the FMF's Khaya Lam (My Home) Land Reform Project, Remgro Limited and the Cederberg Municipality, for the first time, presented 45 full title deeds to lawful property owners in Clanwilliam under the Bond Cancellation initiative. This is the first tranche of 150 full title deeds entirely funded by Remgro Limited. It is also the first physical presentation to take place since the COVID-19 National Disaster was declared and the original date had to be postponed. The ceremony was held at the Kathy Johnson Hall, Clanwilliam, in the North of the Western Cape.”

Ten Imperatives of the Rule of Law: Free Market Foundation of Southern Africa ••• Rule of Law Project •••

The Rule of Law is a Founding Provision of South Africa’s Constitution but this potentially powerful brake on the executive branch of government has not been playing its proper deterring role. A likely reason for this is that most South Africans do not have an adequate understanding of the true meaning of the rule of law. 

The Rule of Law Project formulated the following 10 imperatives of the Rule of Law.

1. All law must be clear, predictable, accessible, not contradictory, and shall not have retrospective effect.

2 All legislation that makes provision for discretionary powers, must also incorporate the objective criteria by which those powers are to be exercised. The enabling legislation must, in addition, stipulate the purpose or purposes for which the powers may be exercised.

3 All law must apply the principle of equality before the law.

4 All law must be applied fairly, impartially, and without fear, favour or prejudice.

5 The sole legitimate authority for making substantive law rests with the legislature, which authority shall not be delegated to any other entity.

6 No law shall have the aim or the effect of circumventing the final authority of the courts.

7 No one may be deprived of or have their property expropriated, except if done with due process for the public interest, and in exchange for market-related, fair and just compensation.

8 The law shall afford adequate protection of classical individual rights.

9 All law must comply with the overriding principle of reasonableness, which comprehends rationality, proportionality, and effectiveness.

10 The legislature and organs of state shall observe due process in the rational exercise of their authority.

Commstar Space Communications™ Announces Its Intention to Deploy Next-Generation Hybrid Data Relay Satellite between the Earth and the Moon by 2023 ••• ~thanks to Jim Bennett

Diana Davis Spencer Foundation ••• recently visible as part of a freeorder network pattern

The Diana Davis Spencer Foundation espouses the values upon which our nation was founded: freedom and individual responsibility. The mission of the foundation is to promote national security, entrepreneurship, self-reliance, free enterprise, and to enhance quality of life by supporting the arts, education, global understanding, health advancements, and preservation of the environment.

freeorder is NOT a synonym for “spontaneous order”. If it were so there would be no need for the word. Thanks to many who have made me aware of this misunderstanding.

freeorder is made of three essentials:

Designed order (intention)

Spontaneous order (self-assembly, autopoiesis)

Quest (individual and shared)

Above all, freeorder, is a balance that must be sought, endlessly. (Tao)

The quality of balance is judged by service to quest.

Issues & Insights ••• real journalism, a project of the editors of Investors Business Daily

About: “This site was started by the team that for decades had produced IBD Editorials at Investor’s Business Daily. Unlike other pundits and media celebrities, we do the hard work of reporting and researching stories before we offer our uncompromising viewpoints on them. We have years of experience covering a wide range of topics, and our goal is to use our accumulated wisdom to help our readers better understand the events shaping the country. We are unapologetically pro free market and for a limited federal government. And we firmly believe that reasoned, intelligent, sober, sophisticated debate, free of insults and pettiness and hatred, is still possible in the U.S.”

Alumni and Donors Unite, latest statement of purpose:

‘Alumni and Donors Unite brings awareness of the need for a return to the original purpose of a college education. We support education, not indoctrination, and are on a mission to restore free inquiry and individual empowerment to higher education by leveraging the substantial financial power and influence of alumni and other donors to counterbalance “overt threats to free-speech and diversity of thinking” and the cultural Marxism that is prevalent on college campuses. We open the eyes of donors—many of whom have little idea of the degree and depth of the corruption at their alma maters.  We connect alumni and other who care deeply about higher education, with their options to support those changes.’

The design of governance for the United States demonstrates a principle of freeorder: Always consider the good returns to be gained by deliberate abstention from control of things that are within your power to control. In the case of USA, that limitation was implemented through federalism. An excellent article ••• by Hannah Cox ••• on this was just published by FEE •••

“There’s Only One Way to Stop Polarization from Tearing America Apart: When another person’s vote has the ability to wield enormous power over your life and make sweeping changes in your community, that is going to lead to hostility.” —Hannah Cox